"Africa: First Class "
Meredith and I were tired. We had spent two days traveling across the Atlantic, seven days walking up and down Kilimanjaro, and six days bouncing along hundreds of miles of dirt road in a beat up Land Rover, all with only a few rest days thrown around in between. I\\'m choosing to forget about my evening impersonating the paint-mixing machine at Home Depot. It was all beginning to feel a little too much like work, and supposedly, we were on vacation. It was time for some R&R, and we chose to spend our last days in Africa on Zanzibar, a tropical island off the coast of Tanzania.
The most common route to Zanzibar is via ferry. The boats leave from Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania. Dar, however, is hell and gone from Arusha, and to get there in time to catch the last ferry, we needed to take the 6 AM bus from Arusha.
We spoke with Benjamin, our friend and tour director at AAH, to arrange for a bus ticket. We had three options for our trip: Coach, First Class and VIP. The prices as I remember were 6000 shillings, 10,000 shillings, and 15,000 shillings respectively. Keep in mind, it\'s 800 Tanzanian shillings to the US dollar. We chose first class since the VIP bus was in fact identical to the first class bus - it only left later.
Benjamin met us before dawn and escorted us to the bus station, about a quarter mile from the boarding house. Arusha\'s bus station is a dimly lit depot filled with a dozen or so large coach busses in various states of ill repair. He led us to our bus, saw that our bags were placed safely into the luggage compartment, and gave us the phone number of a Mr. Kassidi, a colleague in Zanzibar. I tipped him 10,000 shillings and thanked him for his two weeks of service.
Meredith and I climbed onto the bus and stuffed ourselves into the narrow and poorly padded seats. At about five minutes after six (surprising all things considered), we were on the road. However, the bus, already teeming with people, made about six stops on the way out of Arusha to allow more passengers to pile on.
Meredith and I, knees painfully wedged into the seat backs in front of us, looked at each other in bewilderment. We knew the trip was long and wondered if the constant interruptions would ever end. Although we still stopped in nearly every town along the way, soon after leaving the area around Arusha, the interruptions became less frequent, and we were barreling down the open African road.
For the benefit of everyone who hasn\'t traveled in the third world, let me briefly describe the \\\"first class\\\" experience on a bus in Tanzania. The driver was apparently on a mission to break the land speed record in between our all too frequent stops. I felt like I was trapped in some African version of \\\"Speed\\\" and kept waiting for Keanu to pop in from an escape hatch in the floor. The roads are narrow, it was raining through most of the nine-hour trip, and the bus was blasting down this African Autobahn like it had been shot from a canon. We were taking corners on a wet road in a big passenger bus at about eighty, while cattle, bicyclists and pedestrians deftly dodged our hurtling death wagon.
I sat imagining potential headlines, \\\"California Climber Cashes after Coach and Cattle Crash\\\". Maybe \\\"Boy Bites Big One Because Bus Barrels into Buffalo.\\\"
The radio offered a variety of different entertainment options for our continued discomfort. I was hoping for \\\"Radio One Tanzania\\\" and their regular programming of American R&B that we heard from Meckmillan\'s portable radio during our trip up Kili, but our driver didn\'t seem to share the same western musical taste. The tinny but exceedingly loud stereo played Tanzanian political speeches in their native Swahili, an African folk song that ran for about 45 minutes, and an hours worth of Islamic chanting so dissonant that dogs were howling as far away as Ghana.
Meredith squirmed in her seat with every ninety decibel squeal from the speaker inconveniently installed above her head, and by hour four was starting to shake from the frustration and began to describe in vivid detail all the ways she could permanently install that speaker in the bus driver\'s body.
I tried to rest my head against the window but the vibration of the glass shook with enough force to loosen a person\'s fillings. As if that weren\'t enough, the rain soon found it\'s way through the unsealed tracks of the sliding glass window and began forcing brackish brown water into the bus and onto my shirt and pants.
This was about the time the first tiny brown roach crawled up onto my shoulder. And the large man behind us started to fart. Not like I could open the window.
We finally pulled into the depot at Dar around three, and Meredith and I nearly leapt out the window to get off that damn bus. Of course we exited only to be accosted by a dozen eager taxi drivers waiting like hungry hyenas for any tourist fare. Bus stations are notorious for theft, so we ignored all the infuriating men following us around and kept a keen eye for our three bags. My bags emerged from the guts of our bus unscathed. Meredith\'s pack, however, was located near the wheel well and its seal was nearly as good as the one on my window. Her big green backpack - and her only clean clothing - were thoroughly soaked with muddy brown rainwater.
Our bags safely in our grasp, we found William, the least annoying cab driver in the depot, and crushed into his 1978 Toyota Celica taxicab (for some reason with two of his friends) and drove to the docks to catch the last ferry to the island. He rather conveniently could get us a deal with one particular ferry operator - if we were willing to kick a five spot back at him. He was pleasant enough, and at this point we just wanted to get on a boat.
The ferry was a fast and large catamaran with plush vinyl seats and two televisions playing the 1998 Diva\'s Live Concert from VH1. Meredith and I settled in for what we hoped would be a pleasant cruise to Zanzibar.
But no, weary travelers, our trip doesn\'t end there. It\'s at least two-hour ferry ride to Stone Town, the main port city on the island. I had been praying for calm seas but the inclement weather that had so drenched our bus was now rocking our boat.
As we pulled from the harbor, the seas went from two feet to four feet to six feet with the occasional seven-foot swell. Already reeling from our ride on the death wagon, I sat and tried to fight off the nausea, my eyes glued to the horizon, and practiced calming yoga breathing like a Lamaze instructor.
Within thirty minutes the other passengers on our rolling boat began a cacophony of vomiting quickly followed by the babies and their screaming. This wet and wild ride of vomit and tears, all against a musical backdrop supplied by a screeching Mariah Carey went on and on for another hour and a half.
When we finally pulled into port, Meredith and I nearly sprinted from this vehicle as well.
As it turns out, Benjamin had called ahead to his friend in Zanzibar, and Mr. Kassidi, a round and shifty African man and local tour operator, was waiting for us at the dock with as sign for \\\"James John\\\".
He dropped us off at the Malindi Boarding House (only after trying to sell us a place that gave him kickbacks), and we left to find a real meal at Zanzibar\'s famous Pagoda Chinese Restaurant. It was over this excellent meal of spicy broccoli, mushrooms and white rice that the thought first dawned on us.
What if we had traveled \\\"coach?\\\"
